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Monthly Archives: January 2008

Cracking 1024 bit RSA keys

The next time someone raves about the advances of computing ask them about this challenge. Truly a benchmark for the next 100 years in computing a paper published by Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer entitled “On the Cost of Factoring RSA-1024” [pdf] hypothesizes a device which could “break a 1024-bit RSA key in one year […]

local irish bar… hacked

While doing some research for the SOURCEboston pub crawl I wandered over to the Tommy Doyle web page. Clearly not a page visited often or cared for much by the owners since it has a anti-war page up stating: Security :0 My test: 1 Who is ‘the real murder’ Bush? You or this baby? [ […]

TrueCrypt finally coming to Mac OS X

Release scheduled for: February 4, 2008 Unfamiliar with TrueCrypt? Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive. Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent. Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an […]

MPPA admits they were wrong about college downloading

The 2005 study from LEK Consulting commissioned by the MPAA tripled the actual amount of college downloading from 15% to 45%. The industry group now admits they were incorrect about the amount of downloading by college students however they are NOT changing their minds about the rider they attached to the College Opportunity and Affordability […]

RIAA webserver compromised

The following url was found on a popular aggregation site http://riaa.com/news_room.php?resultpage=9&news_year_filter=2007%20UNION%20ALL%20SELECT%20BENCHMARK(100000000,MD5(‘asdf’)),NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL%20– broken down into component pieces the actual sql commands are easier to read: UNION ALL SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000,MD5(‘asdf’)) ,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL — We can see that the url parameters contain a mysql command to benchmark 10M md5 operations on the string ‘asdf’. The very clear and simple […]

Psiphon

As noted on several other blogs… Psiphon is part of the CiviSec Project run by the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. The CiviSec Project is funded by the Open Society Institute. http://psiphon.civisec.org/

Tor

Tor is great if you are already encrypting your traffic. It isn’t the best idea if you are doing a lot of clear text related activities. OSX Instructions here The Tor Overview is worth reading through and I can see good uses for this type of tech for globe trotters who may need to bypass […]

Wireless Resources

Wireless Users Groups bawug.org Bay Area Wireless Users Group nycwireless.net NYC Wireless Group personaltelco.net Personal Telco Project frars.org.uk FRARS Wireless lan working group bawia.org Boston Area Wireless Internet Alliance GBA 802.11 Greater Boston Area 802.11 Wireless Database DC-WiFi Initiative Public WiFi advocates in Washington DC Seattle Wireless Seattle Wireless group Wardriving Resources wardriving.com Wardriving news […]

Generative Internet

Applying this framework, the Article explores ways — some of them bound to be unpopular among advocates of an open Internet represented by uncompromising end-to-end neutrality — in which the Internet can be made to satisfy genuine and pressing security concerns while retaining the most important generative aspects of today’s networked technology. Zittrain, Jonathan, “The […]

Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) Settings

Remote Desktop connections support three security settings: * The low security setting enables 40-bit or 56-bit encryption of all data transmitted from the client, such as keyboard and mouse data. * The medium security setting enables 40-bit or 56-bit encryption of all data transmitted between the client and server. * The high security setting provides […]